The Juiciest Pork Chops All Start With A Milk Marinade

A well-made pork chop is a juicy and delicious star of any plate: Lean and gently yielding, full of delicate flavors, just waiting to be paired with some homemade applesauce. But, as most home cooks are all too aware, pork chops can be tough — not just tough to prepare, but tough as an old shoe when cooked. These are lean cuts of meat, prone to drying out in the time it takes to cook them through. But luckily there is a magic marinating ingredient that will not only gently tenderize your pork chops, but also help create a lovely outer crust and inform the whole exterior with a delicate flavor. What could possibly accomplish all these culinary feats? Plain old milk: When combined with salt and a generous marinade time, it will end your rubbery pork chop woes.

For the uninitiated, this tip might seem counterintuitive. Enzymatic agents in the form of acids, like lemon juice, red vinegar, or even soft drinks, as with Coca-Cola Carne Asada, are usually used to tenderize meat in marinades. While this technique works well for thinner cuts and/or shorter marinating times, it can ruin a perfectly good pork chop: By the time the middle of the cut gets tenderized, the proteins on the exterior will have gone to mush. Milk is also enzymatic, but far more gentle.

We've established that milk, like acid, is also enzymatic — but so mild that it can ultimately tenderize the entirety of a pork chop without damaging its proteins. But that's not the extent of milk's tenderizing qualities: It's also calcium-rich, and calcium teams up with enzymes to promote the breakdown, or tenderization, of proteins. In terms of tenderization, think of this process as speed-aging the meat. 

There's also a non-enzymatic process involved in creating a toothsome crust on the outside of your chop, and it's called the Maillard reaction. It's a complex dance that occurs with high heat, amino acids, and sugars to form a browned, caramelized exterior and irresistible smell.

In addition to being an enzymatic agent, milk also has lots of sugars and proteins. When you brown a milk-marinated pork chop, not only will it be practically fork tender, but the exterior crust will be more enhanced than what you would get otherwise.

What role does salt play in all this? Salt basically unwinds proteins – the technical term is "denatures." Unwound protein strands are less tight and therefore way more capable of retaining moisture, which translates to your pork chop dinner being "juicy." Salt is also the key to a process known as "diffusion," which describes its ability to get thoroughly absorbed into the meat.

Now that you know why salt is important, are there other dairy liquids that might work better than milk? Not really; the only thing yogurt or buttermilk will do differently than whole milk is add flavor and tang. If that's a flavor profile you're going for, head in that direction. Otherwise, submerging thick pork chops in a combination of milk and salt overnight in the fridge will virtually guarantee the next night's dinner outcome with be moist and delicious.